Many medicaments are employed to prevent or control against the occurrence of a disease or disorder as opposed to those which are active against a disease or disorder only when it occurs. However, such medicaments, which are generally termed prophylactics, to be effective, need normally to be administered in low doses over a period of time, sometimes periodically also; and such a procedure is necessarily time consuming and inconvenient. The term therapeutic material or medicament, as that term is used in this specification and the appended claims, are agents such as medicines and drugs which, when applied to the skin or mucosa of the recipient or environment of use, are absorbed through the body surface to which applied and are transported from their site of application by the recipient's circulation system or lymphatic system, to cause a pharmacologic or physiologic response at a remote site in the body.
The prior art teaches a variety of devices for delivering a medicament to an enviroment of use. Such prior art devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,886,935; 3,996,934; 4,117,841; 4,026,290; 4,077,407 and 4,160,020, incorporated herein by reference; and others. While the prior art devices represent significant advancement in the art, it is desirable to provide for a new and improved therapeutic device which provides the unusual combinations and sub-combinations of advantages in construction, fabrication, mode of operation and adaptability and comfort in use.
It is also a desirable object of the invention to provide such a therapeutic device which provides indica of measurement whereby the user may quickly and easily measure a pre-determined amount of medicament to be received by the device.
It is also a desirable object to provide a therapeutic device which will easily enable the user to monitor the absorption of the therapeutic material and determine from time to time the amount of therapeutic material remaining.
A further desirable object of the invention is to provide a therapeutic device requiring relatively little cost to manufacture, thereby making it generally available and providing a clean, effective device for applying medicaments to an environment of use.